1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to selecting a location for a retail outlet in a market region, and more particularly to a method that considers customer's accessibility for determining an optimal outlet location.
2. Description of the Related Art
Certain types of retail outlets, such as convenience stores, 7-Eleven, pharmacies, KFC food stores, bank branches, post offices, and the like are located at busy street level locations in a market region for serving residents of local communities. Customer's accessibility to such outlets may be constrained by physical barriers such as a highway, or a fence, or a river, etc., that do not relate to distance, but are factors that should be considered. These constraints should be considered when we evaluate the fitness of a location for outlets. A method for evaluating a plurality of potential sites in a given city for one or more optimal locations is a computer-intensive task, because it often involves a large number of possible locations (e.g., a city area may have about millions of candidate locations) and a large network of outlets (e.g., in some cases 100 or more outlets may need to be considered).